Hi everyone,
I have a Supermicro X11SSM-F that is currently housed in a tower enclosure. In order to provider neater organization and to allow for drive expansion (even with my 4-in-3 Icy Docks, I'm limited to ~ 12 drives in my tower chassis), I'd like to move this into a proper chassis.
After reading up quite a bit on Supermicro chassis vs cheaper options such as Norco, I've been convinced to go with proper server-grade chassis, and so I'm now looking at SC836 and SC846 enclosures.
A few questions:
1) Will my X11SSM-F motherboard fit into any of the SC836* and SC846* enclosures? I'd have assumed so, but the Supermicro lists officially-approved chassis for each motherboard, and SC836* and SC846* appear nowhere on that list: X11SSM-F | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.. Then again, these are supposed to be "opmitized" chassis, so I'm assuming the rest should still work?
2) I have a Corsair RM550X power supply that I've been using so far (it's fairly efficient and very quiet, although limited in power connectors). It seems that it would potentially only fit a 4U chassis, so the SC846* enclosures. Is it a fool's errand to try to fit that power supply in these chassis? Should I just pick up a Supermicro -SQ power supply and be done with it?
3) How easy is it to swap backplanes? I have for now a single HBA card (LSI 9211-8i), and between a TV tuner and a 10GB ethernet card, I won't have much room for more HBA cards with the motherboard I have, so the -A and -TQ backplanes seem out of the equation if I want to be able to potentially use all the drive bays. That leaves me with the BPN-SAS2-846EL* as possible backplanes (and SAS3, obviously, but these are too pricy for me). I have >2 TB drives, so the older SAS1 backplanes won't work for me.
However, it seems hard to find reasonably priced chassis with the SAS2 backplanes where I live (Europe). Can I just pick up a cheaper chassis with the SAS1 / -A / -TQ backplanes, and switch it for a SAS2 EL?
4) I'm assuming it's trivial to remove the air shroud? I wanted to fit a Noctua NH-D9L in there instead of the active or passive heatsinks that Supermicro sells for this motherboard. Again, is that a mistake?
5) Any other gotchas I should be aware of? This is my first rack build, and I'm discovering a lot of things as I go...
Oh, and I've read this thread already, it was super useful to get started thinking about my own build: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/supermicro-4u-24-bay-chassis-gotchas.11625
Thanks!
I have a Supermicro X11SSM-F that is currently housed in a tower enclosure. In order to provider neater organization and to allow for drive expansion (even with my 4-in-3 Icy Docks, I'm limited to ~ 12 drives in my tower chassis), I'd like to move this into a proper chassis.
After reading up quite a bit on Supermicro chassis vs cheaper options such as Norco, I've been convinced to go with proper server-grade chassis, and so I'm now looking at SC836 and SC846 enclosures.
A few questions:
1) Will my X11SSM-F motherboard fit into any of the SC836* and SC846* enclosures? I'd have assumed so, but the Supermicro lists officially-approved chassis for each motherboard, and SC836* and SC846* appear nowhere on that list: X11SSM-F | Motherboards | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.. Then again, these are supposed to be "opmitized" chassis, so I'm assuming the rest should still work?
2) I have a Corsair RM550X power supply that I've been using so far (it's fairly efficient and very quiet, although limited in power connectors). It seems that it would potentially only fit a 4U chassis, so the SC846* enclosures. Is it a fool's errand to try to fit that power supply in these chassis? Should I just pick up a Supermicro -SQ power supply and be done with it?
3) How easy is it to swap backplanes? I have for now a single HBA card (LSI 9211-8i), and between a TV tuner and a 10GB ethernet card, I won't have much room for more HBA cards with the motherboard I have, so the -A and -TQ backplanes seem out of the equation if I want to be able to potentially use all the drive bays. That leaves me with the BPN-SAS2-846EL* as possible backplanes (and SAS3, obviously, but these are too pricy for me). I have >2 TB drives, so the older SAS1 backplanes won't work for me.
However, it seems hard to find reasonably priced chassis with the SAS2 backplanes where I live (Europe). Can I just pick up a cheaper chassis with the SAS1 / -A / -TQ backplanes, and switch it for a SAS2 EL?
4) I'm assuming it's trivial to remove the air shroud? I wanted to fit a Noctua NH-D9L in there instead of the active or passive heatsinks that Supermicro sells for this motherboard. Again, is that a mistake?
5) Any other gotchas I should be aware of? This is my first rack build, and I'm discovering a lot of things as I go...
Oh, and I've read this thread already, it was super useful to get started thinking about my own build: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/supermicro-4u-24-bay-chassis-gotchas.11625
Thanks!
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